The present invention relates to a system for processing information data registered on a punch card and for delivering an audio message in relationship with those registered data. The present data processing and audio message delivering system is particularly useful as a promotional feature to undertake a local commercial promotion for specific items offered by retailers or public organizations such as in restaurants, shops, stores, entertainment parks or grounds, and so on.
For such a purpose, in order to attract customers, the system may be housed in an appealing body which may exhibit a pleasant personage, figure or individual such as a robot, clown or any other characters which are attractive or sympathetic to the general public. During the promotional campaign, punch cards or tickets are offered to customers who then insert them into a slot provided in the mechanical body to hear from the latter the actual prizes or discount value granted on a specific promotional item. That prize or discount value awarded is in fact determined by the position of the punch hole on the ticket, which information data is read by the processing system when such ticket is inserted into the machine slot and then an audio message is delivered to the customer to announce the prize won. That audio message is indeed issued from a multi-track magnetic tape reader prerecorded accordingly. Particular care is to exercised against forgery of tickets, on the one hand, and for restricting the use of such tickets outside the time period within which items are being promoted. Therefore, validation means have been devised within the system to prevent any abuse and to control efficiently the amount of prizes to be given out during the promotion period.